


We Were Emergencies

by carafin



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Vigilantism, second years as a superhero rescue/ clean-up squad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 18:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10366614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carafin/pseuds/carafin
Summary: As if life as a superhero isn't hard enough already: there's a new vigilante in town going by the name of Mad Dog, and he seems to have a penchant for apprehending serial killers and sending Yahaba into ever deeper depths of work related despair.This does not bode well for anybody.“Fuckoff,” the Mad Dog says, and spits a thick wad of blood onto the ground. Amidst the dim glow of moonlight Yahaba can briefly make out blond hair and dark, feral eyes. The corner of his mouth is still dripping blood. Yahaba realises, with no small measure of surprise, that the Mad Dog can’t be any older than he is.Yahaba, through sheer force of stubbornness alone, refuses to back down or look afraid.Refuses.So many dumb ways to die.“You’re -” Yahaba struggles to think of a phrase to complete the sentence.The Mad Dog. The vigilante hero. The reason why I’ve been having the worst tension headache of my life for the past three weeks.“You’reinjured.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from a poem of the same name by buddy wakefield. rated for some violence/ mentions of injuries, although there shouldn't be anything that's overtly gory.

“I’ve got some pretty shit news for you,” Futakuchi tells Yahaba, by way of greeting, because _obviously_ it being a Monday morning isn’t depressing enough in itself. Not that Yahaba has anything against Monday mornings; it just happens that the team always has their mortality meetings on Mondays and, shit, if there’s anything in the world that can make sitting around discussing what went wrong during rescue missions, and how many people died as a consequence, even more depressing, Yahaba cannot think of it. Not a single thing, and it isn’t even for the lack of trying. “Would you like me to break it to you right now or would you prefer to take the depressing news along with your morning coffee?”

“‘Good morning, Yahaba, how was your weekend?’” Yahaba says, in a long-suffering tone. ‘“Well it was pretty crappy, given the number of last minute clean-up missions that cropped up, but it’s very kind of you, Futakuchi, I appreciate your asking after my well-being.” “Of course, I actually have some bad news right now but I wouldn’t dream of blindsiding you after such a horrible weekend-”’

“Don’t bother, he did the same thing to me the moment I came to office,” comes Watari’s half-amused, half-bemused voice from the adjacent cubicle, and Yahaba almost lets out an indignant _hey!_ at how Watari had cut off his Oscar-worthy monologue. “And it really _is_ bad news. Apparently there’s a new vigilante on the loose in our area.”

“You gotta be kidding me.” _What can be more depressing than a mortality meeting on Monday?_ he’d asked the heavens, naively. Well, at least Yahaba’s found an answer to his own question.

Vigilantes are a rescue team’s worst nightmare. The thing is, Yahaba doesn’t _mind_ being in a team that specialises in cleaning up after other heroes, even if he has superpowers himself. He doesn’t care that his job ranks right at the bottom of the superhero hierarchy, that people call his team the _clean-up crew_. He doesn’t mind relinquishing the spotlight – and the accompanying fame and fortune – to others, or the fact that he’ll spend his whole career in the background, rescuing defeated heroes and dealing with the messy aftermaths of glorious fights. People often laud heroes for their bravery, cheer them on from the side lines and revere them from afar. What they often forget, and it is so easy to forget, is that it doesn’t just end there.

It isn’t enough that the criminal or rogue has been apprehended; it isn’t even enough that the victim has been saved. Somebody’s got to make sure that the (frequently injured, more frequently deeply traumatised) victim is well taken care of; that no other passer-by has been inadvertently harmed in the process; that there should be no rubble lying around that poses immediate danger to anybody. It’s utterly mundane; insipid, even, but no less important for that.

Most heroes are conscientious about keeping collateral damage to a minimum, although the more hot-headed ones tend to cause more carnage than is absolutely necessary. The amount of damage dealt is dependent on the nature of the power, too; there was a period of time when Yahaba spent a lot of time cleaning up, quite literally, after a hero whose primary ability consisted drawing up sewage from the drains and using them to power toxic explosions… it had been a truly dark period in his life.

In any case. Vigilante heroes (heroes not officially registered and regulated under the Central Bureau) are the worst, because if history is of any guide, everything they did tended to degenerate into a lot of senseless violence. Also, because they don’t report back to the Bureau, their activities are notoriously difficult to track and trace, which means that the clean-up crew will almost always arrive too late to the crime scene.

Yahaba makes his way to the kitchen pantry, scoops two heaping tablespoons of instant coffee into his cup, and hovers his hand in mid-air as he engages in a mental debate as to whether he should make his coffee extra strong today, because clearly he is going to need it. His poor heart, though.

“My intel tells me that guy’s real strong, too,” comes Futakuchi’s gleeful voice from outside the pantry. Is he getting a kick out of Yahaba’s misery? He’s definitely getting a kick out of Yahaba’s misery. “We’re talking _Iwaizumi_ level strong. And he doesn’t give a shit about the petty criminals; goes exclusively after the serial murderers.”

Yahaba glares at his cup of coffee, thinks better of it, and then scoops in another two heaping tablespoons for good measure. Fuck his heart; here’s to hoping that the caffeine overdose will kill him before the overworking does.

 

 

While it’s true that Futakuchi might be given to occasional bouts of sadism, the fact remains that there is nobody better at gathering information in the most timely and efficient manner possible than he does. This is something that has, in the grand scheme of things, cut down on precious rescue time and prevented a lot of unnecessary injuries and death.  The ability that is formally registered under his profile in the Bureau is “expert hacker”, but Yahaba knows that his genius lies not just in extracting information but also in processing them in the most logical and thorough manner possible. it’s hard to figure out where Futakuchi’s superpower ends and his natural, scary perceptiveness begins.

His information, while sometimes delivered in the most sadistic manner possible, is almost never inaccurate.

This, Yahaba will reflect later, is precisely the problem.

It’s Tuesday evening, and Yahaba is in the supermarket, picking out turnips for dinner. A very harmless, normal, civilian activity. He waits in the queue for 20 minutes because it’s Tuesday evening and everyone’s grabbing groceries on the way home from work, and of course his phone has to buzz right before he gets to check out his vegetables.

“There’s been a murder attempt, and the vigilante’s involved this time. Took out the murderer before anyone else got to intervene but there’s a lot of collateral damage,” comes Nametu’s voice from the other end of the line.

“Location?” Yahaba asks, deftly making his way through the crowd while thinking sadly about the turnip soup that he will never get to drink. Another voice in his head, sounding suspiciously like Watari, tells him that he’s being unnecessarily dramatic.

“I’ll get Futakuchi to send it to you, and the fastest route you can take.”

“Got it, boss.”

It’s an abandoned shopping mall that is, thankfully, only a five minute bike journey from Yahaba’s current location. Briefly, Yahaba wonders if the vigilante guy had chosen an abandoned building to prevent innocent civilians from getting involved, but retracts the thought almost instantly. There’s no way a vigilante hero would be that considerate, and besides, Futakuchi did _say a lot of collateral damage_.

Watari’s already at the scene by the time Yahaba makes it to the abandoned building, or what _used_ to be a building, because the entire thing has been reduced to a rubble and torn brutally apart, down to every. Last. Brick.

Atop the mountain of rubble is the perpetrator, who is alive but who, by the looks of it, would much rather not be. Yahaba almost feels sorry for him before he realises that the guy in front of him is, in fact, a notorious serial killer whose penchant for killing his victims by slicing their necks open has made Yahaba violently ill on several depressing clean-up missions. If Futakuchi’s intel is to be trusted, they’ve even got a code name for him back in the underground world. The Slasher.

“Unbelievable,” Watari mumbles, mostly to himself. Yahaba doesn’t know if the statement is meant to address the pile of rubble, or the fact that the vigilante had managed to find _and_ beat up someone who’d managed to elude capture for the past year. Watari turns to him. “The vigilante still nearby?”

Part of Yahaba’s superpower is the ability to sense if other superpowers are nearby; a hero’s (or criminal’s) presence is directly proportional to how strong he is. A guy capable of knocking out the Slasher _and_ a whole building in the process, Yahaba would be able to pick him up from ten miles away. He shakes his head.

“There’s no way we’re gonna find him right now,” Yahaba says. He supposes it’s for the best; if they’d been caught in the crossfire they’d probably be soup by now. Yahaba scans the surroundings: there doesn’t seem to be any innocent civilians lurking around, but they’re going to have to check to make sure. And the Slasher definitely needs medical help. And the _building_.

“We’re gonna need backup,” Yahaba tells Nametsu grimly. “You’re not going to believe this…”

 

 

As it turns out, the vigilante guy actually has some sort of notorious, pseudo-celebrity status even in the underground world, and an equally ridiculous nickname to go with it. _The Mad Dog_.

“He’s fucking _batshit_ _insane_ ,” says the Slasher, looking terrified and slightly crazed, voice cracking at the end for added emphasis. Yahaba thinks it’s really rich coming from someone who gets a kick from slashing open the necks of young women, but catches Nametsu’s forbidding glance and resists the urge to drive his fist into the guy’s face. Right. Yahaba has an unfortunate track record of ending interrogations prematurely because of the bad temper of his; according to Nametsu, he’s one more violent outburst away from getting barred from interrogations altogether. “He… he makes fissures and splits the ground like it’s made of cake.”

That explains the rubble. Across the table, Ennoshita looks thoughtful. And also disturbingly calm, given the context of this conversation, but that’s precisely why Ennoshita’s in charge of interrogations. Ennoshita’s a hypnotist, but he’s gotten so good at the job that he doesn’t even need to invoke his powers most of the time. It’s uncanny, really. All he does is slap on this dazed, mellow expression, and wala! - manages to wheedle out every last bit of information out of the most tight lipped of criminals, before they can realise that they’ve divulged everything ranging from their syndicate’s deepest darkest secrets to the horoscopes of their great-grandaunts.

Between Ennoshita and Futakuchi, Yahaba privately thinks that they’ve enough power to bring the whole country down to its knees. Not that Yahaba is ever going to admit it.

“So he attacks by manipulating the surroundings?”

The Slasher shakes his head. “Fucker uses the ground manipulating thing to trap you. _Then_ he attacks you with his fists. And his _teeth_. Like a fucking _animal_.”

This explains a lot of things. For instance, the Mad Dog nickname. And also, the numerous, harrowing looking bite marks on the Slasher’s arms.

“Interesting,” Ennoshita says, eyes gleaming as he leans forward. “Do you happen to know anything more about his background?”

“Not a damn clue,” Slasher tells him. “He appeared a few weeks ago outta nowhere. Thought it was a joke when I got the news, but… fuck, shoulda ran away when I got the tip.”

The guy is giving _the Slasher_ a run for his money. This cannot bode well for anybody.

“...or killed a few more women,” the Slasher continues, ugly features twisting into a perverted smile, and Yahaba’s just about to lunge forward, screw the rules, but he’s too late to it. Nametsu, who was standing behind Yahaba, reaches out and knocks the guy cold in a single, clean blow with her bare fists.

“Yahaba,” Nametsu turns and addresses him in a chiding tone. “What did we say about resorting to violence in interrogations?”

This isn’t even in the realm of the pot calling the kettle black anymore. This is the pot calling the kettle a pot.

“You can continue the interrogation tomorrow,” Nametsu tells Ennoshita, before making her way out of the room serenely, leaving everyone to gape at her. The underground world might not be ready for the Mad Dog, but they sure as hell will _never_ be ready for Mai Nametsu.

 

 

Yahaba gets exactly two and a half days of peace before the Mad Dog strikes again. Retirement cannot come fast enough.

This time it’s Minatoya Soetsu, the boss of one of the biggest syndicates in the city that deals with human trafficking, and he’s been tied against a random tree in one of the forest patches at the outskirts of the city. Or what _used to_ be a forest; unfortunately, every other tree in the vicinity seems to have been uprooted, so it’s less forest and more barren wasteland.

Yahaba is starting to notice a trend.

When Minatoya finally comes to three days later, he gets sent for a gruelling round of interrogations with Ennoshita as per department protocol. It goes pretty smoothly, mostly because the guy recognises that he’s fucked and has nothing to lose, and if divulging more information about the syndicate means that it’ll lighten his sentence, then he’s happy to roll with it.

It goes smoothly, that is, until Ennoshita wraps up the conversation with, “So, about the circumstances of your capture.”

Minatoya freezes. He darts his eye around the room with an expression horribly reminiscent of a trapped animal, as if expecting someone to leap out from the ceiling and shout “Surprise!!!” before beating him into a pulp. Privately, Yahaba thinks it’s a rather befitting expression, given Minatoya’s track record of trafficking kidnapped children.

“We need you to tell us about the Mad Dog,” Ennoshita says, and that’s when Minatoya _loses it_. He starts to laugh.

He’s still laughing, ten minutes later, when he’s escorted out of the room by a disturbed looking Watari.

 

 

This continues for two months; not a single week passes where the Mad Dog won’t stir up some sort of trouble; by then, Yahaba’s already resigned to cleaning up after the guy forever with no hopes of capturing him. Not that there’s any real impetus to: the thing is, there’s a definite trend in the way the Mad Dog operates. He’s always by himself, never there at the crime scene, only deals with the shadiest of villains, and he never, ever gets innocent civilians involved.

The sheer amount of architectural damage, though. Yahaba's never known Nametsu to be anything but ridiculously self-possessed, but there had been a few moments where she'd almost, _very narrowly_ , lost it, courtesy of her ever-growing budget-related despair. 

“I don’t understand,” Futakuchi says despairingly, for the fifth time in a single hour, during which he’d tried and failed to retrieve any information regarding the Mad Dog. It drives him mad, it does, when Futakuchi _doesn’t understand_. “What’s he doing this for? Because it sure as hell isn’t fame or money. Why’d he appear now? Where’d he come from? It’s been two months, so _why can’t we capture him_?”

Yahaba’s only answer is to shrug and spoon ever-increasing amounts of shitty tasting instant coffee into his mug.

 

 

Because there is no god, Yahaba’s beeper goes off on Sunday, at four in the morning. The saddest part about the entire affair isn’t even that Yahaba has to drag himself out of bed; the saddest part is that Yahaba is _already_ out of bed, and is, in fact, already in the midst of a clean-up mission. There’s been a fight between three heroes and a pyromaniac at one of the bars in the heart of the city, involving a lot of fire, explosion, and the general idiocy of drunken men.

The heroes are lying in a pool of their own blood, the pyromaniac is nowhere to be found, there are no fatalities but a lot of people have been injured, and the fire is _still_ raging on.

 “We’ve a report from a civilian,” Nametsu tells him wearily from the other end of the receiver. “Construction site three miles away from where you are. There’s been a fire and we need you to investigate it; I suspect the Mad Dog’s involved. Bring someone along with you.”

“Got it,” Yahaba tells him, and looks at the scene. Practically the whole team is there, minus Futakuchi who’s back in the base. Ennoshita’s using his hypnosis to help calm down hysterical civilians. Shirabu’s definitely needed at the scene; they need his power to help put out the fire, and he’s barely making progress because _someone_ thought it was a good idea to set off a fire in the middle of a _bar_. Watari’s nowhere to be seen, probably tending to injuries or retrieving people who are still trapped in the fire.

Yahaba curses inwardly, hops onto his motorbike, and makes his way to the construction site alone. If Futakuchi’s intel is to be trusted – and Yahaba can count, on one hand, the number of times Futakuchi’s intel has actually failed them – then it’s probably the doing of the Mad Dog again. Which, given Mad Dog’s track record, means that there perpetrator will be knocked out cold and draped across the ground like an offering on the plate, there will be minimal civilian involvement, the Mad Dog will be gone, and he would’ve left the site annihilated in his wake.

Which means that Yahaba will probably be safe, even if he’s going over alone.

As it happens, he is deliciously wrong.

The first thing Yahaba sees when he reaches the construction site is the pyromaniac that’d been responsible for the fire at the bar, lying on the ground in a semi-conscious state while making pained, groaning noises. Yahaba doesn’t _see_ the second thing so much as he senses it; it’s one of his abilities, after all. Another Super’s lurking nearby, his aura so overwhelming that Yahaba can only arrive at one conclusion.

Mad Dog’s at the scene; he’s hidden amongst the rubble a few hundred metres away from where Yahaba’s standing, to be exact.

Strange; it isn’t like the Mad Dog to lurk around after he nabs his prey and destroys whatever can be destroyed. And the construction site’s layout is complex enough that he’d probably be able to slip away without getting noticed, even if someone else were around (barring, of course, his knowledge of Yahaba’s sensing abilities.) That leaves two explanations: one, he’s injured and can’t run. Two, he’s lying in wait to ambush Yahaba.

The wisest course of action, Yahaba reflects, would be to grab the pyromaniac’s body, and run the hell for his life.

As it happens, Yahaba does not make the best life choices. If he did, he would be sleeping in bed, on a Sunday morning, because that was what normal people with regular nine-to-five jobs did. Not chasing after half-crazed lunatics with a penchant for destroying everything on sight and biting their enemies to death.

Slowly, Yahaba makes his way towards the general direction of the Mad Dog. He’s about twenty metres away from the other guy when the Mad Dog jumps up from behind a piece of rubble.

“ _Fuck off_ ,” the Mad Dog says, and spits a thick wad of blood onto the ground. Amidst the dim glow of moonlight Yahaba can briefly make out blond hair and dark, feral eyes. The corner of his mouth is still dripping blood. Yahaba realises, with no small measure of surprise, that the Mad Dog can’t be any older than he is.

Yahaba, through sheer force of stubbornness alone, refuses to back down or look afraid. _Refuses_.

So many dumb ways to die.

“You’re -” Yahaba struggles to think of a phrase to complete the sentence. _The Mad Dog. The vigilante hero. The reason why I’ve been having the worst tension headache of my life for the past three weeks_. “You’re _injured_.”

Mad Dog’s hands are angled in a grotesque manner, there’s a cut across his left flank that’s still oozing blood, and a gaping wound on his thigh wide enough that Yahaba can see the tendons underneath it.

“Fuck _off_ ,” Mad Dog snarls, and scrunches his face up, as if bracing himself for something. Then he blinks, surprised. On his face the expression looks strange; it makes him look younger than he already is.

“You can’t use your power on me,” Yahaba tells him. Nullification is Yahaba’s trump card, the second ability of his, and probably an important contributing factor as to how he’s managed to stay alive so far despite his disastrous decision-making skills. (The other important factors include Watari, Futakuchi’s intel, and the fact that if he kicked his bucket prematurely the entire team will never forgive him, and will probably take turns to spit on his grave.) “I can stop people from using their powers within a certain radius.”

Mad Dog stares at him for an uncomfortably long time. Slowly, his expression gives way to a disturbing smile. “Then I’m just gonna have to do it the hard way.”

Mad Dog lunges forward, with a speed that should not be possible given the state of his grievous injuries. Luckily, Yahaba’s hand-to-hand combat is nothing to scoff at, and he narrowly dodges the punch by a hair’s breadth.

If the hit had landed, Yahaba would probably have ended up concussed into the next century.

“I’m not here to fight,” Yahaba says, desperately, which is the truth. “Or to capture you.” Which is less truthful, but sometimes Yahaba’s not beneath lying a little to save his ass from pissed-off vigilantes determined to pummel him to death.

Mad Dog glares at him suspiciously. Fair enough.

“Look, can we take care of your injuries first?” By the looks of the surroundings the guy must’ve lost a good litre or two of blood. Yahaba wonders if he’s still standing upright through sheer willpower alone.

Mad Dog’s look of suspicion morphs into flat-out disbelief. “You wanna _nurse_ me? The _fuck_ for?”

“Because you’re injured?” Yahaba wishes Ennoshita were here instead. Or Watari. Hell, anyone else in the team would be better at diplomacy than he. Expect maybe Futakuchi, who’d probably get his head bitten off three sentences into the conversation.

 “You lured the guy out here,” Yahaba says, slowly, and he’s not even sure what he’s trying to prove, “So that you could deal with him alone, away from the civilians.”

Mad Dog studies Yahaba, expressionless, for a good ten seconds. Then he lets out a raspy laugh and lunges forward before Yahaba can react; it’s way too late for Yahaba to dodge, so he shuts his eyes and braces for the impact, but Mad Dog grabs his shoulder and flings him out of the way, out of line from a blast of fire.

Yahaba whips his head in time to see the pyromaniac spitting out another fireball from behind a scaffold a hundred metres away; he’s too far away for Yahaba to nullify his abilities. Yahaba curses inwardly. The guy must’ve come to while Yahaba was distracted, and now they’re going to burn into a crisp.

Getting roasted to death by a crazy pyromaniac because he got distracted arguing with a crazy dog-guy ranks pretty high up in Yahaba’s list of Dumb Ways To Die. The top _five_ , in fact.

He is so going to have his grave spat at.

“Stop your nullification!” Mad Dog snaps at Yahaba. “I need my powers-”

“I already _did_ ,” Yahaba shoots back. No point keeping his cool now, what with the fact that they’re going to die and all.

With that, Mad Dog lets out a bloodcurdling howl, plants his palms onto the ground, and splits the ground between them and the pyromaniac cleanly. It doesn’t stop there; the sheer impact of the ground fissuring sends a shower of scaffolding onto the pyromaniac, who gets buried in ten seconds flat.

Yahaba’s poor head is still reeling from the aftershocks of the quake when he realises that he’s miraculously unscathed from the general chaos surrounding him. That’s when he realised: Mad Dog’s made sure that the ground directly around Yahaba - and the ground supporting the scaffold above his head - has remained intact, something that must’ve required a ridiculous degree of skill. Yahaba turns around, opens his mouth to speak to Mad Dog, but the other guy is already sprinting away at incredible speed. Even then, and even in the dark, Yahaba can tell that he’s favouring one leg over the other.

“Wait,” Yahaba yells, but of course Mad Dog doesn’t hear him. Or even if he does, like _hell_ he’s going to stop for Yahaba.

As always: Yahaba’s left alone, amidst the dark of the night, in the aftermath.

**Author's Note:**

> what can i say... one year later and the necessity to clear up 100k worth of WIPs finally outweighed any remaining sense of shame
> 
> (am on [twit](https://twitter.com/cara_fin) for a while, feel free to drop by and say hi o/)


End file.
